From an Associated Press article (via Findlaw.com)–“Bush Calls for Streamlining Tax Code“:
President Bush on Friday called streamlining and reforming the U.S. tax code an “essential task for our country,” but offered few hints of how he intends to get it done.Treasury Secretary John Snow said “everything’s on the table,” including possibly the popular home mortgage and charitable deductions and a former senator leading a tax-reform panel for Bush said that a national sales tax or flat tax also could be in the cards.
Also, there is a press release containing the Executive Order establishing the President’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform (from the TaxProfBlog) as well as this Announcement of the appointment of members to the Advisory Panel. The Wall Street Journal here notes that the members are a “mix of academics, Wall Street types, and former government officials including former Minnesota Rep. Bill Frenzel, who served on Mr. Bush’s Social Security commission in 2001.”
Also, another article from the Wall Street Journal has more:
Snow insisted the administration is committed to tax reform and said he saw no reason why legislation couldn’t be ready to go to Capitol Hill by autumn. For one thing, he said the administration will be in close touch throughout the process with the tax panel so its recommendations won’t come as a complete surprise.The tax panel will hold numerous hearings both in Washington and around the country both to get new ideas and to make the case for its recommendations, Mack said.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, is urging the Panel “to use the tax scoring conventions of Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation in fashioning its tax overhaul proposals” as reported here in the Wall Street Journal:
The chairman and ranking minority member of the Senate Finance Committee on Friday urged President George W. Bush’s new tax reform panel to use the tax scoring conventions of Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation in fashioning its tax overhaul proposals.“We fear that failure to adhere to Congressional estimating standards would severely undermine any proposals recommended by the advisory panel,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the senior Democrat on the committee.
And don’t miss this op-ed on tax reform by William F. Buckley, Jr. (from NPR.com)–“Whither Taxes?”–in which he makes this observation about tax reform:
[T]ax reform is a new code enacted after massive wrestling and eye-gouging and threats and excoriations, presented as a civilized enhancement of social policy. It is an assertion of justice, justice understood as a blend of considerations: the necessities of the state; the toleration of the body politic; the relationships of power among the affected interests; and rough justice. All of the above decocted from the minds and hearts of 535 legislators.